And there we go: towering inferno!
The archetypal disaster movies are The Towering Inferno and Titanic.
The fact that we all know the outcome, of course, gives it the extra piquancy of re-watching Towering Inferno.
But the torture sequence immediately follows a bone-chilling, audio-only prologue of the voices of terrified Americans trapped in the towering inferno of the World Trade Center.
The cake he concocts for the Taste of Staten Island contest — a towering inferno of cakes, circus tents, lion cages, clowns and chocolate-covered popcorn — isn't actually edible.
The government's "bonfire of the quangos" must look more like a towering inferno today to the thousands of people affected directly.
Restlessly I remember The Towering Inferno, in which Steve McQueen played a fireman: presumably from choice, possibly out of the exhausted artist's deep longing to do something useful.
WHAT WE LIKED Tuna tartare, Towering Inferno, chicken-vegetable soup, house salad, Caesar salad, Chilean sea bass over broccoli rabe, skirt steak, Gold Coast veal, pork chop, meat loaf, barbecue chicken, apple pie, pear-peach cobbler, brownie à la mode.
He progressed from documentaries and B-films to become a leading proponent of high-octane, action-adventure blockbusters like Towering Inferno and King Kong, and big-budget dramas like Death on the Nile.
